


parts of me remain here

by orphan_account



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/F, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Patch 5.1: Vows of Virtue; Deeds of Cruelty Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 21:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Looks like someone forgot to lock up. Lazy,” she says, pushing her way through the massive wooden doors. The smile she’s wearing is clear as day even without needing to look; it’s there in that faint scratch on the edge of her voice. Rasp like the cracked spine of a long-held journal.
Relationships: Alisaie Leveilleur/Warrior of Light
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55





	parts of me remain here

She finds you in your inn room at the Crystarium.

You’re sitting on the edge of the bed, barely halfway out of your armor and leathers but for the top you ripped yourself out of hours ago. At the time, you thought you might magically stumble into the energy needed to eat; to throw on a blouse and head down to the markets for food. Maybe not the most coherent of looks: Grenoldt’s personally tailored leggings, no bra, and a silky summer shirt, but you’ve seen strangers in worse. Besides, it’s the middle of the night. No matter how new _night_ is as a concept here on the First, the only people still awake by now are the people who get it.

The knock is what gives her away. Somehow, you doubt anyone else in any other reflection of the world could manage to infuse that specific combination of confidence and anxiety into a simple flick of the wrist.

“Looks like _someone _forgot to lock up. Lazy,” she says, pushing her way through the massive wooden doors. The smile she’s wearing is clear as day even without needing to look; it’s there in that faint scratch on the edge of her voice. Rasp like the cracked spine of a long-held journal.

You glance through your bangs from your perch on the mattress, elbows still resting in your lap, and you meet the bright ocean blue of her waiting eyes with a tired, tired smile. The scent of the baths drifts in with her: a soap like unfamiliar fruits and that welcome nothing of warm water and steam beneath. She’s dressed in simple nightclothes, a soft, oversized tunic long enough to be a dress, and yet her still-damp hair is done up as neatly as ever, the ribbon and hairclip locking her braid together like she would never allow herself to be seen any other way.

Or, maybe, she ran against the same pulsing _something_ keeping sleep out of reach as yourself.

Tataru would know exactly how to tease her about it. Maybe you’ll ask when you’re back on the Source. You could pick up some good wine — a rare vintage from one of the villages near Eulmore, something to _really_ knock her socks off — before your next gossip session about the Scions in either world.

You’ll talk about how bad they are with money, how impressive the recruits have become as heroes in your increasingly frequent absences, and how _truly, truly awful they are with money. _Tataru will fill you in on the messes Aenor keeps getting herself into chasing after the Boulder brothers. You’ll bring up the way Alisaie looks tonight, bathed in the glow of the moon. It could be good. Those secret midnight talks are already the only good use anyone’s ever gotten out of the nook at the back of the Rising Stones where the boxes are never unpacked and the moving in is never done. There shouldn’t be harm in turning one on yourself for a change.

Just then, Alisaie moves, and you’re back in the moment. One step closer, another, and another like it’s the most casual thing in the world, her being here. Like either of you have had the courage to be alone together in the space after everything Amaurot was. Is. You were dying, then you weren’t, and you were gone, and you’re here, and now… Well. All that death had to end up somewhere.

That it chose her is almost fitting.

“You could’ve been robbed, you know,” she says, head tilted to the side, hands behind her back. Still smiling, always smiling, and another step closer.

Teeth bared like the world’s friendliest snarl, you say, “I could use the adventure.”

Alisaie’s answering giggle is small, barely more than a ducked head and a shallow exhale caught on the breeze, and she steps closer, and closer, and closer until she’s close near to nudge your legs apart. Close enough to move between, long fingers running lazy patterns along the waist of your leggings.

“_Idiot,_” she whispers, laughing fondly, nerves keeping her eyes firmly away from yours.

And so, you set yourself to work, to moving, because you know this dance well enough by now to lead with your eyes shut tight. You could speak, try to comfort her — you’ve been doing it more here on the First, sarcastic little comments that derail important conversations for blissful few seconds of easy breathing — but, you stay silent. You stay silent, and you reach up, arms draped heavy over Alisaie’s slender shoulders as you work at the ribbon still tied in her hair. When the pads of your fingers brush up against her neck, her breathing hitches. But the silence returns almost as quickly as it left, and you finally tug the ribbon free, watching as it drifts gently to the floor.

“I couldn’t,” she says, thrown astray by a gasp when you open the engraved metal tie nearer the top of her braid. It comes apart as easy as a snap, and her hair spills down in graceful waves, settling soft over the delicate shape of her. You’ll ask about it someday, you think, as you place the metal in her hands and close her fingers over top. Someday, just not today. _Take your time, I’m still here._

Alisaie nods at your unspoken promise. She squares her shoulders, turns toward the nightstand at the opposite side of the bed, and breathes.

_Take your time, you are too._

“I just got you back. I couldn’t bear losing you in such a ridiculous way after so much hard work.”

“I understand. Word is, I’m your ride home.”

“That’s not — ” she bites, tears held back by nothing but the tension coiling tight in her throat. She whips around to face you, to breathe deep and strike again, only, her eyes fall to your smirk. Her eyes settle there and on the knowing sparkle in your eyes. On the hand at the collar of your shirt, lazily unbuttoning its way down, one by one by one. She breathes deep, shaky, voice falling fast to whispers when she says, “That is not what I meant, and you know it.”

_Come here, _says the first button, _let me help._

The next says nothing, but Alisaie glowers at the newly exposed skin of your chest anyway. An empty snort of air, eyes fluttering open and closed, and she forces herself to look away; to shrug out of her clothes more stiffly, more mechanically than you ever thought her capable of moving. Less of a striptease and more of a threat. A punchline like soft, smooth skin on a barely toned body. Strong thighs, lithe muscle, and determination doing its best to masquerade as the fondest sort of rage.

She stalks her way back over and straddles your lap, both hands tangled loose in your hair, and there’s barely so much as a chance to smile before she takes your chin between two fingers and asks, “_Well?_”

_Well? _

_You seem to know why I’m here._

You take the chance anyway. You laugh, and laugh, and laugh into the hollow of her neck, absentmindedly tracing shapes over the ridge of her hips and peppering tiny little kisses to the dip of her clavicle between each rise and fall of your chest. In and out, laughter, and gasps, and moans.

It was easy, before, to forgot how much you missed this. Between all that fighting, and living, and dying for the sake of two worlds; between the bittersweet love of an ascian who only ever saw you as a reflection of what once was and what might be once more; between every awful thing in this wonderful, wonderful world, you let yourself forget the simple joy of being. You let yourself forget the warmth of Alisaie’s smile in quiet moments, the way she laughs when you drag a finger over the dip of her collarbones, or the shape of her ribs. The way her nose crinkles, just slightly, just barely, when she allows herself a moment of pride. You were busy doing too much, too fast, saving two worlds at once, and you let yourself forget everything but heat.

“Alisaie,” you whisper, lips still against hers.

She tastes like the sun. She smells like home. The thought should embarrass you. It _would_ embarrass her, but it luckily remains trapped under waves and waves of thought. And, when Alisaie lets out a noise that sounds suspiciously close to _impatient, _pulling you back into a kiss and pushing her weight forward until you both go toppling over into the bed, the white noise of satisfaction drowns it out completely.

In the absence of thought, you focus on that. On her nails scraping dull over your scalp. On the kiss. On the way her breath tastes like faint traces of what little sleep she must have tried to sneak in earlier, and on the way she’s leaning closer, and closer, and closer, pressing more of herself against your body like willpower alone might be all it takes to meld her body with yours.

You try to say her name again, to make her slow down, but she’s tilting her head away, nipping at the underside of your jaw and lapping down your neck, frantic heat, and touch, and more, more, more, and the protest fizzles to nothing with a groan somewhere down in your throat. You could let it happen. You could let her keep going.

But. As much as you might like to know where this goes; this newly aggressive her dead set on making you understand just how your near-death hurt her, how much her own impending death scares her, it’s obvious, too, how nervous she is to be _close_. No more fracturing souls or impending doom to tamp that feverish need for proximity into manageable little pieces, these days.

There is, too, the bigger concern. The thing you had no time to worry about until now. The fact that while you aren’t the first, you _are _the first to care. It comes through in every barely perceptible twitch of her fingers, every sudden stuttering breath, and every split-second burst of tension where her mind shuts down, overloaded and shooting off sparks of _what do I do, how do I keep you here, why are you letting me go this far this fast, why, why, why_, before it all fizzles to static and her body takes over.

You might not be the first, but you’re the first to care, and seeing her comfortable enough to be uncomfortable; seeing her comfortable enough to be embarrassed; seeing her fight so hard to suppress that confusion of feelings under nails, and lips, and teeth is enough to tell you exactly what to do.

She’s on her back, staring up wide-eyed and still, in the very next second.

_One _benefit, you suppose, to lugging around an axe bigger than your torso until just one of your arms ended up bigger than both of hers. She’s on her back, nails digging into your shoulders as the stars shine in through open windows and paint her in pinks, and violets, and blues.

The way she calms in the space of a single, choked-off gasp when the calloused pads of your fingers drag down her stomach is everything, everything, everything in these worlds.

You slip a hand between her legs, waiting, and watching, and smiling as she arches closer, closer, closer at the feeling of your fingers sliding home. One at a time, one after the other. Your other hand cups the back of her neck, carding through her loose hair as you lay the full of your weight against her; a return to that too-forceful kiss and the blissful press of bodies she was so intent on chasing.

When she finds it, things are quiet. Nothing but your breathing and hers, steady and not, faint whimpers breaking the pattern and building it back up again. Eyes drowning in unblinking eyes. Lips ghosting slow over lips. Fingers curling up, and up, and up, while the flat of your palm works soft and not, hard and again, over, and over, and over.

Nothing but your breathing and hers.

Things are quiet.

And then they aren’t.

“_There,_” she says, and you answer. _There, there, right there, _she says in the flash before you catch her lips with yours and the words tumble into a jumbled, high-pitched mess of incoherent mewling. She buries her face in your shoulder, teeth sinking in hard enough to break flesh and nearly hard enough to pierce muscle, an empty inward groan muffled in the slow trickle of blood down her chin.

She shakes and sighs like light bursting free, like a flash of day in the middle of the night.

She writhes, and she moans, and she _moves _in your arms, barely allowing herself to be held back under the weight of your arms, under the grip of your hands, nails digging further, teeth biting harder, legs wrapping tighter, tighter, and tighter around you until it finally begins to fade. Until the night returns, sleepless wildlife singing in the trees outside and Alisaie slowing, going slack, licking up the mess she made of your shoulder like there’s nothing else she would rather be doing.

“_Gods,_” she breathes in the short fragments of time before her lips finally, finally find their way back to yours.

One of her hands slides down, slipping past your breasts and your navel to fumble again with the waist of your leggings, and,

“Go to sleep,” you chuckle, peeling yourself away just long enough to earn a truly pathetic whine and a pair of hands pawing lazily at your waist when you reach for the sheets bunched up at the foot of the bed. Silly as it might seem, she worries when you go. She worries you might not come back. _Don’t you dare leave me alone._ So, you stay. Not that you ever planned to leave, but, you stay. For her. You pull the sheets up and over her head, smiling like someone else entirely at the noises she makes. You smile like someone living another life; someone without the titles _Warrior of Light_ and _Warrior of Darkness_ bearing down on their every second spent in public; someone whose biggest concern is the very, very needy Elezen pouting in her arms.

“Go to sleep,” you say again. “We’ll have time for that later.”

And you will. You’re alive.

**Author's Note:**

> 2nd person POV still feels kinda weird, but it's also the only way my brain will let me write warrior of light fics apparently. Thanks for reading!


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